Stop Doing These 6 Things on Social Media! (Your Viewers Will Thank You)

Everyone knows how important social media is to digital marketing. Most of us are using social media every day, so your business needs to have a social media presence to reach your ideal customers and targets.

But as a digital marketer, there are some things that businesses do on social media that make me cringe. I see the same mistakes being made time and time again by businesses trying to attract leads online, but missing the mark. It’s just posting on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, right? Just the same as you would post on your personal account? If that’s your current attitude toward social media marketing, these are the things you need to stop doing right now.

1. Posting Without A Plan

Think you don’t need a plan to market on social media? You couldn’t be more wrong! All marketing requires careful planning, research, and implementation to reach more quality leads and present your business and product in the best light. When you fail to plan with social media, your social marketing goes nowhere, and you miss valuable opportunities, or potentially spam your followers! Sit down and make some goals, as well as a time-lined plan to guide your social media marketing.

2. Overdoing the Links or Hashtags

Ever seen those post on Instagram or Facebook with about 20 hashtags after a sentence of content? Nothing screams “scam” louder to me! While hashtags can be extremely useful and links to your site and products make sense, don’t overdo it. As a rule of thumb use just 3 relevant hashtags, and only 1 or 2 links in your post.

3. Being Rude or Aggressive

Sure, people are more relaxed on social media, and many of the regular business norms are waived. You may be interacting with customers directly online on a daily basis, as well as receiving both positive and negative feedback in a very public forum. But that never means you should become rude, aggressive or confrontational. Whether you’re right or wrong, no-one is going to want to work with you after that.

4. Copy Pasting Content From One Site to Another

Yes, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are all social media sites. No, you can’t recycle the EXACT content on every one! Each social media platform has its own unique needs, and these need to be accommodated and targeted appropriately to get the best results. Twitter has a character limit, and Instagram doesn’t allow links outside of your bio. Facebook uses algorithms to determine which posts get more visibility. Understanding and respecting these requirements ultimately means better results for you.

5. Posting the Wrong Content

Unlike your personal social media pages, your business social media pages are no place to air your personal grievances, talk politics or overshare about your personal life. And NEVER lie or mislead customers on social media. Keeping it fun, playful, but professional is the way to go.

6. Not Having Specific Landing Pages

If you don’t have specific landing pages for each of your social media campaigns, you’re just not maximizing your chances of nurturing leads to a sale. Each lead that has come from a specific social media platform has a unique background and requirements. Cater to these with specific landing pages, and you’ll see your marketing results soar.

Social media is an incredible tool for marketing and networking, but if you’re not getting the results you want, check to make sure you’re not committing any of these deadly social media sins!